One stimulus, many experiences: Using within- and across-subject variability to understand neural correlates of conscious interpretations.

COEX 

I will present results from several recent studies aiming to understand how and why people may arrive at different interpretations of the same sensory information. In the first study using independent film shorts, we found that individual differences in neural event segmentation predicted ultimate memory for and appraisal of the film’s content. In a second study, we found within-subject changes in neural activity when people experienced a valenced narrative for a second time, in light of new contextual information. Finally, in a third, ongoing study, we are investigating how and where changes in neural representations of the same ambiguous social information predict behavioral reappraisal of that information.